01 November 2008

Three More Days

Only 3 1/2 more full days before the election and both campaigns are planning to work up until the closing of polls on Tuesday.

Film and Election Update

Here in Cincinnati Malcolm and I are well into our filming of his experience as a British political activist doing ‘Get Out The Vote’ work in Ohio.

As I type I am uploading the 3 hours of footage we shot yesterday.

One of the biggest pieces of American news aside from each campaign's latest strategy is the slow down of the US economy this last quarter. You wouldn’t have known it though at the 'Hollywood Creations' store yesterday morning in Cincinnati where Malcolm and I hunted for Halloween Costumes for the evening's 'Trick or Vote' event.

Malcolm bought a stars and stripes top hat as well as a Bill Clinton mask and I walked away with a Statue of Liberty costume of which there are pictures on somebody’s camera, somewhere.

We went door to door with Malcolm’s friend Lewis, another British politico, asking people to make sure they get out to the polls on Tuesday. It was a non partisan event which meant it was simply about stressing the importance of voting versus one candidate’s politics over the other.

I was surprised at how many people had already voted. And how only a few commented on Malcolm and Lewis’s British accent. Maybe some thought it was a part of their costume. Most people were excited to see the Bill mask, one man yelling out 'We Miss You, Bill' as he closed his door. We subsisted on chocolate, pizza and alcohol last night and I am still recovering. Cincinnati really puts on a spectacular Halloween and I had forgot how Americans go all out. Perhaps the best costume among our crowd was a Diebold voting machine where if you voted for a Tootsie Roll a hand came through the silver box and delivered a Dum-Dum, and vice-versa. Again, there's a picture on someone's camera, somewhere!

Before the 'Trick or Vote' event we attended a Hillary Clinton Rally at the Letter Carrier’s Hall in Cincinnati. The crowd was fired up as there was talk of America being so close to realizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream and I found Hillary’s speech more inspiring than Bill’s in Harrisburg on Wednesday.

There was a small minority at the Rally who were wearing ‘Hillary For President’ t-shirts and after the rally, we witnessed one woman yelling out from her car window as she was stuck in the post-Rally traffic. She was apparently still upset that Hillary was not on the Democratic ticket.

One man across the street who at first was lending this woman his ear finally shook his head and drove away in frustration, ‘I don’t really have time for this.’ He had been trying to push Obama and she just wouldn't have it. It was the closet I had come to an election fight yet.

I juggled a still camera, a video camera and a digital audio recorder at the Rally and sometime after Hillary began speaking I decided to press record to see if I could capture the moment.

Today Malcolm plans on doing some canvassing and tomorrow there’s word of an Obama Rally in Columbus, and some say Cincinnati!

Car Update

For those of you wondering what happened to the ‘Spirit of America’ car after it wouldn’t start yesterday morning, the problem boiled down to fuel-injection cars and my lack of experience with them.

After a kind man arrived in a big red truck and charged the battery, I told him about how the car sputtered yesterday when I turned over the key after stopping for 10 minutes at the petrol station. It took three revs of the engine to get the car going.

He started to suspect the cause of the problem was something other than the battery.

‘Do you press down on the gas pedal when you start the engine?’

I gave an enthusiastic yes.

‘You’re not supposed to do that.’

I had no idea.

‘It’s okay, lots of people don't know.'

He was trying to make me feel less bad about my ignorance.

'The car's fuel-injected. You don't need to pump the gas pedal. You probably flooded the engine.'

‘This must be a new thing,’ wondering how I could have missed out on this particular driving lesson.

‘Um…since about the 80s.’

The 80s?! There really was no excuse.

We both started laughing. And I can hear you laughing too.

‘Have a good one,’ he said while climbing back into his big red truck.

Blog Update

Be sure to check out the sidebar of the blog for more related material.